Shadow of the Lords

2

My son’s knife jarred against my hip as I walked back towards Amantlan. Each time the hard smooth metal knocked against my skin it reminded me of him. Each jolt was like a faint cry, a distant sound of despair and pain and fear which I could never answer, and each imagined cry seemed fainter and more plaintive than the last.

I felt an impulse to take the knife out and look at it, to talk to it even, as if it were the only thing I had left of its owner. I fumbled inside my breechcloth for it but came to my senses just in time. There were too many people about, any of whom might have noticed a thin, ragged slave clutching a unique bronze knife. Boatmen poled their canoes nonchalantly through canals that, here at least, were regularly cleaned and dredged by work details made up of the parish’s common folk. Little children, their cloaks flapping over their naked loins, followed their mothers from house to house, the women bearing food or hot coals to light a failed hearth or just going to gossip. A small group of men was working its way along the canal towards me, their calf-length cloaks, stone-pillar hairstyles, cudgels and set, determined expressions giving them the look of a war party.

I peered at the soldiers, looking nervously among them for a green uniform or the peculiar glitter of sunlight on the blades of the captain’s vicious club. I tensed, with my fingers curledtightly around the hilt of the knife. If the Otomies had managed to extricate themselves from the chaos I had left behind me in Tlacopan, they might well be after me, to punish me for misleading them.

These were not the captain’s warriors, however. From the casual way they spoke to passers-by, they seemed to be locals, and it was easy enough to guess what they were about. Somebody must long since have gone behind that screen by the canal and found the remains among the stinking pots there, and these men were making routine enquiries.

I let go of the knife, pulling my hand out of my breechcloth just as a young woman, a passenger in a canoe, shot me a disgusted look.

I lowered my eyes self-consciously before turning quickly away.

I dared not go back across the bridge between Amantlan and Pochtlan. Anyone seen near where the body had been found was liable to be stopped and questioned, and as a runaway slave I could not contemplate that.

I wanted to go back to Kindly, to tell him what had transpired at Skinny’s house, and to question him about it too. Kindly had told me that Skinny’s father and brothers had worked for him. At the time that had not made sense, because I had assumed that Skinny was from the featherworkers’ parish. What kind of labour could a family of featherworkers provide for a merchant? Atecocolecan, on the other hand, was the sort of impoverished place that would breed field hands, day-labourers and porters. I could have understood Kindly hiring men from there. But then how had Skinny become a featherworker in the first place? How had he gained admittance to a trade so jealously guarded by the families that had practised its secret arts for generations?

However, I would have to postpone my conversation withKindly. It would mean a long detour through the neighbouring parishes. In any event, I thought a call on Skinny’s rival would be just as valuable, especially if his daughter and son-in-law had run off with the stolen costume. If there was any chance that Idle was the thief, then I had to find him. He might know what had happened to my son.

I had no trouble finding Angry’s house. In the parish of the featherworkers everybody knew where their chief craftsmen lived, and the first person I asked, an old beggar pretending to sell withered-looking chillies out of a broken basket, pointed the place out to me straight away. He wished me better luck than he had had, which I took as a reflection on my appearance.

‘What is it now? Not that bloody chilli seller again? I thought we’d kicked his arse into the canal!’

Angry’s voice was as loud as it was fierce. He was shouting over his shoulder at the man who had let me into his house, a wizened little man with an undistinguished commoner’s short cloak and tonsured head, probably a needy relative whom the master featherworker employed as a favour. This servant stumbled meekly after the craftsman, mumbling and plucking at his cloak, while the great man strutted about his busy courtyard like a turkey cock surveying his hens.

Angry himself was a tall, portly man, whose cloak hung limply about him with the air of having despaired of ever being able to conceal his stomach. His hair was white and his face deeply lined. He was older than his rival, Skinny, perhaps as much as a bundle of years old. As he walked his arms waved clumsily. They seemed to move independently of each other and the rest of his body. I had always thought of featherworkers as artists, whose delicate fingers manipulated the materials in their grasp as carefully and tenderly as a midwife washing anewborn’s face. It was hard to reconcile this image with Angry, whose hands ended in tuberous growths that looked like rolls of dough.

He was the kind who could draw the eye to him irresistibly, so that at first I barely noticed what else was going on in his courtyard. Only when his servant finally managed to attract his attention again and get him to pause, stooping and frowning, while the little man explained who I was and why I had come, did I think to look around and take in my surroundings. They were remarkable.

The courtyard had a bare look. It was clear of anything that was ornamental or that did not obviously serve an immediate practical purpose. Even the idols were fewer in number than usual, although there clearly had been many more, for the walls were covered with bare plinths and empty niches. Curious though these were, I barely spared them a glance before gaping at the people. The place was crowded. It throbbed with so much activity it put me in mind of a beehive.

In one corner, boys stirred steaming pots of glue: liquid turkey fat whose vile smell suffused the whole space. They doled the stuff out into wide tortoiseshell bowls, which smaller boys carried to the women pasting freshly carded cotton on to maguey leaves, to the men who stuck broad, coarse heron and parrot and molted spoonbill feathers together to form the bases of patterns, and to a little group in the far corner who sat apart from everyone else. These last were the true craftsmen, whose task it was to select and place the most precious plumes, those plucked from the green trogon, the red spoonbill and the hummingbird, and the most prized and coveted of all, the long, shimmering tail feathers of the resplendent quetzal.

There were others whom the boys ran straight past, because their part of the process did not require glue: the women whocarded the cotton, creating layers so thin that a picture could be traced through them; the men who laid the cotton over the pictures the scribes had drawn, to trace their designs on to it; and those who carefully peeled the painted and glued cotton away from the leaves that had been used as backing.

From all this industry would emerge the fabulous, radiant, shimmering feather mosaics that were Angry the craftsman’s speciality.

He was striding in my direction now, his face dark and his brow creased in a frown that matched his name. Incongruously, two small, fat dogs trotted silently at his heels. They came and danced around my legs, growling at one another and sniffing and pawing at a loose thread hanging from the remains of my cloak while their master glared down at me.

‘What do you want?’ he demanded, adding, before I had time to answer, ‘I hear you know something about my daughter and my son-in-law. Tell me about it!’

I eyed his pets suspiciously, having always thought myself that the only place for dogs was in a nice hot bubbling stew with beans and chillies. ‘I went to see Skinny and his wife today …’

Angry interrupted me with a loud snort.

‘They told me you weren’t the best of friends.’

‘Did they, now?’ His face darkened. He glanced down at the dogs, as if noticing they were there for the first time.

‘Acamapichtli! Ahuitzotl! Come here!’

As the beasts trotted, whimpering, towards him, he bent down and scooped them up in a fold of his cloak. Then he turned away again, but only for as long as it took to catch the eye of his elderly servant.

‘I’m busy. Look after these two.’ He handed the beasts over with more tenderness than I would have thought him capableof. His servant held them at arm’s length as though he thought they were about to defecate all over him.

‘You must be fond of dogs,’ I observed.

Still looking away, the big man grunted. ‘My wife was. She bought a couple to breed from with the cloaks I gave her when we were married, and got quite successful at it, but for some reason none of hers ever ended up in the pot. Whenever we ate dog it always came from the market. I keep those two you saw for her sake. They’re the last of their line.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘When did you lose her?’

‘Three years ago. It’s none of your business. Tell me about my daughter.’

I told him about my meeting with Skinny and Butterfly, repeating the story I had offered them: that I was Kindly’s slave, sent by the old merchant to retrieve his property ‘They said Marigold and her husband disappeared on the night the costume went missing. Of course, I don’t know that your daughter had anything to do with the theft, but it would help if I could find her. Kindly is very keen to sort this out as quietly as possible.’

‘So you think I’ll help you find my daughter, do you?’

‘Or I could help you find her,’ I said coolly. ‘Skinny and Butterfly said she hadn’t come here. So I thought you might be anxious to know where she was, as well.’

There was a long, dangerous silence while he thought about what I had said. Then, surprisingly, he uttered a harsh, mirthless laugh.

‘I see what you’re about! I must be desperate to find my daughter and that wastrel of a husband of hers, and so if I don’t cooperate with you it’s because I’m hiding her, is that it?’ Suddenly he leaned towards me and showed me just how delicate those long, broad fingers were.

I was caught unawares. I stumbled back. Before I couldregain my balance Angry’s thumbs were pressing into my throat, one either side of my neck, and I was fighting for breath and struggling to keep my feet at the same time, while my hands flailed vainly in the air between us.

‘You’re strangling me!’ I gasped.

His face was so close to mine our noses almost touched. ‘So I am,’ he murmured nonchalantly. ‘A little more pressure and I’ll crush your windpipe.’

My knees were trembling and my eyes were straining to get out of their sockets. I tried to cry out but all I could manage was a feeble rattle at the back of my throat. There was a sound in my ears like waves crashing on a rocky beach. I began to feel dizzy.

Then I was on the ground, spluttering, coughing and choking, with one hand clawing at my bruised throat.

I lay groaning and shivering and willing my arms and legs to move so that I could get up and stagger away, out of the featherworker’s sight. When I shook my head to clear it a wave of pain and nausea swept over me. I retched feebly, but nothing came out. I slumped on the hard earth of the courtyard, seeing nothing, but distantly aware that I could still hear Angry talking.

‘No, Axilli, you don’t understand.’

‘But, Uncle, if he can help us find Marigold …’

The other speaker was a boy whose voice was on the verge of breaking. I twisted my neck cautiously until I could see them both.

‘If only you were right!’ the featherworker cried. ‘But he can’t. It’s too dangerous.’

From where I lay Angry and the boy who called him ‘Uncle’ were dark shapes against the bright afternoon sky Axilli, whose name meant ‘Crayfish’, was a slight figure beside his uncle’s bulk. He looked down, as though dejected.

I levered myself upright. ‘Dangerous?’ I said hoarsely. ‘Why? All we want is the costume back. Kindly will even pay for it. No questions asked.’

The big craftsman stared at me. ‘And you think Marigold has it?’

Before I could reply, he had turned his back. I watched him step delicately over a heap of discarded feathers to stand in front of the nearest wall. When he spoke again, his voice was surprisingly soft: so soft that I had to make an effort to hear him.

‘You see all these empty niches and ledges? She took all the idols with her, when they moved to Atecocolecan. She had to have them with her, you see.’

I scrambled unsteadily to my feet. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘My daughter loved the gods, Joker, or whatever your name is. She feared them, but she adored them as well. Do you really think someone like that would steal the raiment of one of them?’

He gently laid one of his enormous hands on a ledge. Then a long, low sound escaped him: something between a sigh and a groan.

‘It’s funny. I used to think they were quaint, while she was here. A nuisance, even. Now I miss them.’ He turned around, but not to face me: his eyes were fixed on the ground at his feet, while his hands hung loosely at his sides, as if he had forgotten what they were for.

‘Marigold is my only child, she’s all I have — can you understand that?’

When his hands moved this time, it was not to encircle my throat, but to cover his eyes and the rush of tears that threatened to flood them. Crayfish was at his side, but all he could do in the face of his uncle’s torment was wring his hands helplessly.

Watching them, I had to force down the memory of what I had felt just that morning, tipping dismembered and desecrated remains out of those stinking jars by the canal.

‘I understand,’ I said. ‘I had just the one son myself. He … I think it would help him, if I could find this costume. If it wasn’t your daughter who stole it, maybe it was her husband — can’t we work together?’

He dropped his hands. His glistening eyes widened. He looked at me for a long moment, frowning thoughtfully, as if he were making a decision. Then, gruffly, he asked what I wanted to know.

‘You could start by telling me what it is between you and Skinny’

Angry laughed, a short, harsh sound, such as one of his dogs might have uttered. ‘Why don’t you ask him?’

‘I could,’ I said. ‘I might, except he isn’t here.’

He sighed. ‘We might have been friends, partners, instead of rivals, if it hadn’t been for … well, never mind. Look, I’ll show you something.’ He turned to Crayfish. ‘This is my nephew,’ he said, by way of introduction, before adding, to the boy: ‘Go and fetch me one of the dahlias, will you?’

‘Dahlias?’ I echoed, confused. The last dahlia I had seen had been killed off by frost at the end of autumn. Why would the featherworker want one now, anyway?

When the boy came back, I understood. He was carrying a picture of a flower.

It was a mosaic, made entirely of feathers: red feathers, on a background of black feathers. As Angry handed it to me, I admired the way it captured and reflected the light. The bloom in its centre had been built up in layers, to give it a depth of colour that a real flower could barely have surpassed. If there had been any bees around at this time of year, I thought, they would be swarming over it.

‘See this?’

‘It’s beautiful.’ I imagined a single bloom dropped on the lake, an offering perhaps to Chalchihuitlicue, the goddess who presided over the waters. I saw this flower drifting about the city at night, on its bed of water as deep and dark as the dense, shimmering black feathers — from a grackle or some other species of crow — and sinking slowly into it as it became waterlogged, until it silently vanished.

The picture was snatched from my grasp and thrown to the floor.

‘“Beautiful!”’ Angry spat the word contemptuously back at me. ‘Of course it’s beautiful! It’s just as beautiful as every other picture of a sodding dahlia that’s come out of this workshop in the last thirty years. And you know why?’ He whirled around, almost turning a full circle as he threw an arm out to encompass his courtyard. ‘Because of Crayfish here and all the rest of my little army. Because everybody does one job, carding cotton, tracing patterns, mixing glue, hardening feathers, whatever, one job, the same, day in, day out, until they get so good at it they never even have to think about what they’re doing. Not a real craftsman among us, but we can turn out anything you want — shirts, skirts, shields, fans, mosaics — anything, as long as it doesn’t have to be unique, original, something none of your friends will ever have seen before.’ He glared at me. He seemed to be daring me to ask the obvious question, and so I did.

‘What if it does?’

‘What if it does what?’

‘Have to be unique, original, or whatever?’

He looked away. He was silent so long that I thought he had not heard me, even though I was standing only a couple of hands’ breadths from him, but then I caught his almost inaudible reply.

‘Then you go to Skinny, of course.’

He stood with his shoulders hunched and his head bowed, as motionless as a tree stump, and his eyes were pale slivers against the dark flesh of his face. He was a larger man than I was in every way, and stood a head taller than I did, but I felt that to meet those eyes I would have to squat.

In the long silence that followed, I noticed that many of those sitting around me were making as if to go, laying aside their feathers, bone spreaders, paper and copper knives and creeping towards the exit from the courtyard with a furtive air and the bow-legged, hunchbacked gait people adopt when they are in plain sight and wish they were not. They did not want their employer to see them leaving, even though the sky was darkening and there was a chill in the air. I guessed that Angry drove his workers hard, but now he seemed oblivious to them.

‘Uncle …’ ventured Crayfish eventually, stretching out a hand which was brushed aside.

‘It’s getting late,’ the big man muttered. ‘It’ll be dark soon. I’m going indoors.’

He turned and stalked off. I looked at the youth standing next to me, who sighed. ‘Come on’, he said.

I let him lead me towards the back of the courtyard and the kitchen, where I knew I would find the Old, Old God watching over three hearthstones surrounding a low fire.